Geometrical morphology characterization and taxa identification of land Snail populationsin Algeria

Abstract

In the context of the evaluation of animal genetic resources in general and the diversity of land snails in particular, we contributed to a morphometric and phenotypic study of this animal groupes 14 districts whose, they are recognized by their snail production. To achieve the objective measurements with geometrical approaches were collected from 751 individuals. Four parameters related to the body of each animal as the height of the shell (HC), the length of shells (LC),shell width (LGC) and the weight (P) and two phenotypic characters flesh color (CCH) and shell color (CC). The ANOVA test show a significant differences on body measurements between districts andspecies. In fact, the obtained results show that the Otala punctate is the most common species in Algeria; otherwise, there is significant phenotype variability betweenindividuals, which confirms that snails exhibit a large polymorphism. An Independence test was carried out on the phenotypic characteristics revealing that the regions influence the qualitative characteristics.This study it one of very few research undertaken in this field especially in Algeria. It is an important approach to be taken into consideration during conservation and improvement programs for this endangered species because of illegalpickup.